coming up at the place where the u.s. sends those they call triable guantanamo bay it's also the place where a massive hunger strike is underway and now we learn the u.s. military wants millions to upgrade get a look at the cost coming up. and people for the ethical treatment of animals an organization devoted to protecting our furry friends but a report out of virginia says last year the group put down sixteen hundred cats and dogs at their shelter well ask pete about this practice coming up. and it's thursday so that means it's time for tech talk did you know twitter turned seven today and they've obtained a what does it mean for those of us that tweet we'll find out later in the show.

there is a march twenty first five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. . we begin today with guantanamo bay as a hunger strike there continues a general is now telling congress that the base needs one hundred seventy million dollars for repairs general john kelly the top commander of the u.s. southern command says the bases in dire need of upgrades he says the barracks and dining hall are teary orating general kelly says these repairs are critical for u.s. troops stationed guantanamo bay but he says conditions detainees are living in are just fine if their prisoners are still on a hunger strike after forty four days they say it's a protest the conditions they live in and that copies of the koran were taken from them and mishandled general kelly says the real reason the prisoners are on strike is because they're angry at the president for not closing the prison like he said he would discuss i was joined a y. a short while ago by retired colonel morris davis former prosecutor at guantanamo

bay he's also a law professor at howard university and he began by saying the one hundred seventy million dollars request seems to be a sign that one tunnel bay is not closing and the time soon. it was interesting general kelly said you know guantanamo was intended to be a temporary facility so the things that were built were intended to last for a few years not for a decade or more and you know we're eleven years now so it's another what hundred fifty two hundred seventy million on top of the hundred twenty million the spent every year just on the recurring cost of keeping the detainees there so going along with what the general said so i mean it was the intention for this place to shut down but now we're just in so deep that that's just not feasible right when i was involved as chief prosecutor we designed the expeditionary courtroom which was a prefab type building because it was intended to be used for a couple of years and then disassembled and taken apart never used again but that

was back in two thousand and six two thousand and seven and the clock keeps running in the facilities just weren't meant to last for ten or eleven years i want to take a look now at some of the things that general kelly pointed out as things he needs money for one of them a new twelve million dollars dining hall for the troops a new one hundred eleven million dollars hospital and medical units for detainees and almost eleven million dollars for a communication network facility to store data and computer records and things like that so. aside from the hospital get most. general kelly says detainees the conditions they're living in that that they are subjected to are just fine is that the case i've been down there in a couple of years but i believe that's probably correct because their facilities were built modern modeled after prisons here in the u.s. so they were mainly more permanent type structures that is the general said

a lot of these guys are getting older they've been there ten or eleven years and some are beginning to get into that geriatric medical state get no really what equipped to handle so you know it's really interesting to me you've got the fiscal can. services here that are trying to pass a budget with drastic cuts but here we've got guantanamo where they want to spend one hundred twenty million dollars a year to keep in essence eighty guys that we really want to keep incarcerated plus another hundred fifty million on top of that so you know in a few years that adds up to a considerable amount of money now they're talking about defunding n.p.r. i mean the n.p.r. budget you could fund for a couple of decades based on what we're spending right now they're asking for millions and millions of dollars on something that president obama said was going to close long ago. you talked about the health that they're the health concerns that they're facing there and many of them had been there for quite a while over a decade and now there is this hunger strike which surely isn't making their health

conditions any better the detainee say that they're going on a hunger strike to protest that some of their personal belongings korans were mishandled but the general came out and said something different they said that they're actually angry at president obama for not closing the prison like you said that he lied about the real reason i don't know if there are they had hope and hope and change in mind as well as an obama took office and i guess they've been just this illusion does a lot of us it bought into that slogan as well but you've got a majority dominik guantanamo eighty six of one hundred sixty six have been cleared for transfer who have been in confinement now for you know more than a decade in some cases so for them the hunger strike you know they're kind of out of sight not a mind in the only way to potentially call attention to it is to do something drastic like a hunger strike so the numbers you know d.o.d.'s said the numbers come from seven to fourteen to twenty one to have leave twenty five is the last official number but if you talk to some of the attorneys that have been down there they say that's

a lowball figure that is probably three or four times that right now they are getting some attention what do you think it will take for for this basic to close down well i think it's going to take the american people paying attention and demanding that it be closed i mean if you look at the issue. drove i mean the program with drones went on for a number of years and not much really happened so suddenly people here paid attention it took rand paul you know doing the buster right it's going to take the american public focusing their attention on guantanamo and unfortunately it takes sometimes people dying for that so i guess maybe it's more awareness of the issue to get well no one has even longer there's a lot of money being wasted that one ton of and a lot of our prestige has gone down the tubes as well which is no good reason to keep it ocurred are great really great to have you here that was retired colonel morris davis law professor at howard university a victory for those against capital punishment maryland state legislature has passed a bill banning the death penalty but when it comes to the ultimate punishment you

may be surprised to find out what other countries countries are in the u.s. is company artie's margaret howell has more the death penalty debate in this country is coming to a head again with maryland saying it doesn't want to kill its inmates anymore the same legislator voted to abolish the death penalty in the last currently on governor melis desk awaiting a signature. would be the eighteenth state to abolish the death penalty take a look at this map all the states and right have the death penalty the once and wait don't who says the united states iran north korea saudi arabia he says they can't agree on anything one common link they all still practice executions here's another map for you all of these countries use the death penalty the world's top executioners in two thousand and eleven were china with more than a thousand kills followed by iran with three sixty saudi arabia with eighty two iraq with sixty eight the us with forty three yemen forty one and finally north korea with a mere thirty death penalty kill. the offenses that equate death vary remarkably

from country to country and well let's face it there are a lot of justifications countries used to kill criminals for instance being a homosexual in the us does not get your head cut off here as it doesn't saudi arabia and apostasy garners execution in iran but you can convert him ever you want freely in the us to any religion the biggest reason the united states sends people to death row murder technically treason is still in the books here too but as the death penalty offense goes no matter what the countries who kill killing is still killing as a continuation of the of the brotherly love the united states stepped in and joining forces with their fellow death penalty nations to continue the practice making sure the united nations doesn't even think of establishing a moratorium on executions the international body was considering it back in november of two thousand and twelve incidentally the united states is the only country from the prominent g eight group of leading global economies to still carry out executions eighty eight percent of us criminologists say that the death penalty

is not a proven deterred for homicide and so abolishing the death penalty will not increase the homicide rates in the u.s. the cost of the death penalty to the u.s. federal government it varies it costs about eight times that of a federal murder case in which the death penalty is not sought. using maryland as a case study the state's been one hundred eighty six million dollars killing five people the one upside of the death penalty it does offer some closure to families of victims of violent crime and some of the states will still have a recourse for those who commit violent crimes the same legislators are deciding if the death penalty is still appropriate or not in washington margaret how will archie well by now you're probably well aware of the animal rights group peta their ads are kind of hard to forget some so racy they've been banned from television like this one. i

. turns out the people for the ethical treatment of animals might have a spotty record when it comes to animal treatment according to a report released from the virginia department of agriculture and consumer service says peter killed a shocking ninety percent of the pets under its care at a norfolk virginia shelter that's one thousand six hundred forty seven cats and dogs just last year only nineteen were placed in adoptive homes so you're probably thinking how is this possible isn't this organization supposed to save animals earlier we're joined by a spokesperson for peta bruce wieland who gave us the story behind these numbers well peter makes no secret at all that we have to euthanize most of the animals we take in but that's because most of the animals we take in are sick or injured or

dying or they're brought to us by people who see that their companion animals are at the end of their lives and they're too poor to be able to afford an expensive trip to the vet for euthanasia they know that if they bring the animal to us we will not turn them away in fact we don't turn away any animal ever we take in all the worst case scenario animals and because we do that we're able to offer a service to the community that unfortunately often involves euthanasia we give those companion animals a quick merciful release from their suffering ok you won't turn them away but as we see the vast majority of them are killed so i mean if they must hannibal's end up getting killed why bring them to peta i mean chances are we know what their fate is going to be. oh peta has many many successful rescue stories as i said the majority of animals who come to us are dying and they face

a quicker more merciful death with us than they would in their current condition and people know that and they use peta as a shelter of. ok i mean i want to ask you because you know peta really has a very strong advertising campaign and it's known for its provocative advertising do you think that. people see this and at the same time you guys are killing animals so i mean this can you see why this can be viewed as hypocritical. oh well the provocative only draw more attention to our website where we're able to talk about the serious issues like the real culprit here which is the animal overpopulation crisis that's really the enemy that needs to be addressed and all of our efforts are aimed at addressing that the animal overpopulation crisis oh my yes every year six to eight million animals into u.s. animal shelters and roughly half of them that's over four million animals have to

be euthanized because there simply aren't enough good homes for them and i don't want to get arrested over there but we just saw an ad. practically almost naked women tossing around vegetables how does that get the word out about the overpopulation of animals and how to properly address that well actually that was for r.v. getting a campaign getting people to stop eating meat which of course is the greatest killer of animals that's currently going on on the planet and although some people see it as provocative and it is that happened to be one of our most highly viewed videos of all time and brings people to our website which then allows us to engage them in conversations about why they should go and what it does for their health and the environment not to mention the animals plus all of the other animal issues that peta is heavily involved in you know some might ask. that peta has a budget of about thirty six million dollars that maybe some of that money should

go away from those celebrity stunts and racy ads and go towards actually saving animals. a huge. amount of our budget goes toward the heart and soul of our work which our undercover investigations the provocative ads that you're talking about are successful well in fact you're talking about them and that's proof that they are successful that's what people see so that is one of the main ways that we use. the media and social media to be able to get our message if you go to peta dot org and look at the work that we do for peta saves dot com which which gives a comprehensive overview of all the animals that we have saved in all the areas where they suffer the worst abuses i think you'll see that. our budget is going to the right causes mr wayland appreciate you coming on the show that was very sweet and a spokesperson for peta thank you for having me knots of the latest developments in

the tech world twitter has revolutionized the way we communicate and now they have a patent for their messaging system they now have the rights for the technology that allows a single user to get the same message in multiple places the computer fraud and abuse act has been used lately to prosecute cyber crimes it was very and back in the one nine hundred eighty s. but some say it doesn't make sense and the technology dependent world we live in today now another man has been convicted and is going to jail is this justice and speaking of prosecuting cyber crimes the family of late internet activist an innovator and swartz is in a battle with mit but now that the university has announced its plans to publicly release documents related to swartz's prosecution earlier i was joined by john harshman editor of buzz feed tech n r t producer bob english today is twitter seventh birthday and they have just issued a new pattern which allows them to send messages as i mentioned earlier through

several platforms so i started off by asking john is this special because it seems that we have this technology already. right twitter's patent is written like a lot of software patents which is to say it seems too obvious to be patentable but apple's got tons of patents like this twitter has a few already for example twitter owns the patent to pull to refresh you know when you pull down your message list and it refreshes twitter is unique in the tech world and that it sort of has set itself against the general movement of aggressively enforcing patents it's a set in the past and in relation to this patent that it will only defensively use its patents it's hard to imagine someone suing twitter for operating a twitter like service but the patent trolling is an increasingly serious issue in tech so it makes sense for them to get this pat what do you think bob does have an effect on innovation in social media certainly because a patent is

a form of monopoly privilege and even if it's only temporary for a certain number of years so twitter is saying that they're going to use this as a defensive measure only well what does that mean i mean would they go on the offensive with it. i'm tempted to think that if a competitor sprung up with a similar business model that they wouldn't hesitate to use it if they got big enough and i think that's what happened in these dells we're going to talk about it later the computer fraud and abuse act some people say that that is too vague not specific and worried that this broad language could lead to over prosecution in certain instances and actually that's exactly what some say happened to andrew arnheim are twenty seven year old twenty seven year old computer hacker known on the internet as we he was just sentenced to forty one months in prison for discovering a security flaw. website gone is this fair or is this cya the sign of another law that is out of date and needs to be updated. i think this story is getting lost

a little bit we've because of his reputation as a hacker and sort of a bit of a troll. is is like not the most sympathetic figure in a situation like this but what he did with a team to you was actually in many ways a service to the company and right to customers he exposed a security flaw and he reported it maybe not in the most responsible way he went to the press and he shared. some details of the exploit with with other hackers but there was there are really clear signs of malice in what he did and i think that some of that's getting lost because of his his personality and his reputation i think the laws under which he's being prosecuted are overly broad and they're being interpreted in extremely broad way and there's a direct line you can draw between what's going on with weave and what happens there and ford and i and some cases companies pay for somebody to point out these

security flaws right right had he been on had he been on a team he's payroll he could have been making six figures doing the same thing i want to turn the conversation now to aaron swartz as you mentioned john there is a link there and swartz faced decades in prison he allegedly broke into the mit computer to make academic journals public and after after he took his own life many say prosecutors went way too far and pursuing have now mit is making documents public what does this mean for the case bob first they're not making everything entirely public in the redacting certain names and there is a bit of a fight going on the judge in the case actually has discretion whether or not to release this so it's not a completely transparent process so far so is it fair we don't know that's up to the judge right now all right i think just thirty seconds left what do what do you think this means for the case john. i think it more than consequences for the case this will have consequences for mit from a p.r.

standpoint i think they're doing this to distance themselves from what has been you know a tragic and very public spectacle they have repeatedly tried to sort of disown what happened and i think they're there they may be using this as a way to sort of further distance themselves from from what happened to aaron i guess we're going to have to wait and see gentlemen thank you both for weighing in on this tech talk today on this thursday that was john herman editor of buzz feed tack an hour to producer bob english the mayor bloomberg is at it again last we heard from new york mayor new york city mayor michael bloomberg his ban on big gulp sodas citywide was overturned now he has switched his focus to another vice cigarettes the mayor just proposed two bills that would require retailers to keep smokestacks hidden from plain sight instead of having them displayed behind the counter bloomberg said that the laws of are especially for the benefit of quote young and impressionable new yorkers so what

a new yorkers think about the idea are to went to the streets to find out because smokers you know we can get the cigarette. we'll have a way to get it but you know i think people have mothers and fathers already i don't think they need additional talent to tell them what to do i think it's a little bit on the intrusive side we're about liberty and he has no business in the way we should fix the school system instead of worrying about who buy cigarettes i mean i think as far as cigarettes go it's not going to stop people you know people who want to smoke are still going to smoke i really feel like. it's taking away the choice from individuals but i think it will help children to want to smoke. well this isn't bloomberg first crusade against tobacco he has already had smoking banned in restaurants and parks during his tenure after these bans smoking decreased in the city according to the new york city health department and whether the city council will move forward with these bills remains a burning question. well today is the international day for the elimination of

racial discrimination it's a day we'll look back on the country's dark history of race relations and look at the issues as as it stands today on the surface it looks like we've come a long way after all we have a black first family but to what extent does racism still exists if you look at who is locked up in our prisons and the poverty rate in the us it appears to still be quite a problem listen to this professor of african-american studies at georgetown university which you see no was young black and latino families and it released a bit just the growth of the you probably raise as i see it in d.c. the poverty rates. nonlocal. so how far have we really come when it comes to race in the united states to discuss i'm joined by our two producers because you know that i and rachel kearns yes welcome to the both of you great to see you in here so. the fact that we have a black president seems like pretty compelling evidence that we have come

a long way in this country rachel what do you think well i think that as far as role modeling goes for children of color certainly seeing a black family even in the white house is of is is certainly progress whether that means that racial discrimination goes away especially for people on the streets who aren't living in the white house who are say living in cities or even towns i think that you'll find that racial discrimination very much exists as as other forms of just the fact that we do have a black president represents some progress definitely doesn't mean that it's not an issue today. want to ask you. i think race has become a very complicated issue these days but it's really everywhere even when it comes to helena kavanagh you told me a story related to this earlier. like you were saying. when you come back to the president being black i mean today pew research just released a new fact saying that you know his his rating has gone down even further and but

to mention the cab story it's really interesting i just moved to d.c. a few weeks ago and i was talking to one of my friends and she said to me. if you know go out there and try to get a cab and i was like why don't you do it and she says to me are you crazy like i'm black i can't get a cab and i was like you're not serious right and so i had to go and get a cab because it was night time because apparently there is this thing here in d.c. where if you're black you might not get picked up by a cab and so i'm just baffled by that what what. i'm not even white i'm latino i'm my father's peruvian my skin is why it's a very mixed question for me. for anyone of a background but the fact is that like if you're black in d.c. your chances of getting your are pretty low. yeah rachel what do you think about that right here in d.c. and then there's capital so i've got a little bit of background from a cab driver who is explaining his impotence he explained to me that he does not

pick up young african-american men on the street particularly at night and the reason he gave me was this one time he did in the northeast of d.c. pick up. a group of three young african-american men and they ultimately stole his car and beat him up and then ended up crashing the car so this isn't to say least in my opinion i don't think that everyone who is african-american is going to do that certainly not to the contrary but for this for this taxi driver he was so shaken by the experience by that one moment that he was willing to engage in racial discrimination even though he knew it was against the law and against the rules he signed as a cab driver because of an experience he had faced so i think that until we get past seeing entire groups of people based on one experience you've had racial discrimination such as we've talked about with these cabs will continue interesting . sometimes a pop culture popular culture really shines

a light on the way things are in our country today what do you think when it comes to consumerism the media entertainment does it point to maybe some things if in our race relations today rachel what do you think sure will there's a very interesting example recently alexis texas is a pornography star and she recently came out saying that she refuses to have sex with black men in her videos you know a lot of people came out and this created a lot of controversy a lot of people came out saying you know what alexis texas this makes you a racist a lot of other people said how does this make you rate how does this make her racist she just has a preference she just say prefers white or that or latino or asian men to black men . but what we've found doing research is that another grand hypothesis for this is that the majority of her audience is white and she fears that if she engages in interracial pornography that a lot of her audience may be turned off and therefore she won't be as valuable as as a commodity or as able to make money at her job and you know other and other people

have said also that interracial pornography plays very much on stereotypes about what it is like when people of different races have sex and that it very much plays on these stereotypes and as such is racist in itself so the more it seems that we try and glean answers about race and racial discrimination the more questions are raised very interesting i want to ask you have you know because we live in this post nine eleven world and we've seen this rise of islamophobia it is that population here in the u.s. a new target for hate crimes and racial discrimination. i mean i think that's a very very good question especially bringing the topic back to the day that we're celebrating today that the u.n. has announced that it's the international day for the elimination of racial discrimination and ultimately if you go back to the iran contra scandal here in the u.s. they were not necessarily the most welcoming of feelings towards iranian americans

or perhaps iranian refugees were that were living in the united states now let us keep in mind that you know it's difficult to come to live here in the states if you're from a different background that we're not familiar with you know i remember when i first moved here to the u.s. i was put in a sort of students with for difficulties class who had trouble learning and i had no trouble learning i was just put in that class and sort of. you know forced to be there and i remember like saying to my parents some of her teachers at the time like why am i here and there they were saying oh it's because you're different and i had to sort of like fight my way out of there in my first few years here living in the united states because i wasn't born and bred here i guess you know when you grow up in your parents and then and then everybody wants to be different right. appreciate you both weighing in on this that was our two producers give unit or i and rachel currently us think you look like the popular lulu lemon athletic i may

be stretching the patience of its customers the purveyor of expensive workout clothes just announced that it would be recalling seventeen percent of its popular yoga pants why because when customers did their downward facing dogs hello yogis could get an eyeful the pants were to see through so why did the comp why didn't the company catch the issue until after the pants were already shipped and a cat press conference conference call this morning c.l. lemon christine day said that quote the only way to test for the problem is to put the pants on and bend over. so next time you're in the market for yoga pants don't forget to test the belt first you don't want to hear disaster we're going to leave it off their blog for more of the stories we cover check out our you tube channel you tube dot com slash r t america and our web site r t dot com slash usa and follow me.